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Archive for the ‘military’ category: Page 202

Aug 14, 2018

The Perfect Can Wait: Good Solutions to the ‘Drone Swarm’ Problem

Posted by in categories: drones, military

The nearly successful drone assassination attempt on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro earlier this month highlighted yet again a persistent worry for U.S. defense planners: the possibility that a swarm of cheap drone-borne bombs might overwhelm the sophisticated defenses a U.S. base or ship. While the defense industry has seized upon this concern and is currently at work developing new high-tech solutions to this problem, the Department of Defense can’t rely on those alone. It makes sense to develop such solutions, but the Department of Defense procurement process is long and the threat is now. With a little ingenuity, there is much that can be done with existing technology to defend effectively against drone threats. Accordingly, this article focuses on the measures the Department of Defense can employ now, with existing technology, to mitigate the threat of drone swarms.

The Current Problem

The drone swarm threat to U.S. naval installations and ships is already quite serious. Only a small amount of explosives and shrapnel would be required to cause significant damage to many of the most important radars, cameras, and important flight systems on ships, missiles, and aircraft. Damaging critical equipment would put military platforms out of action for several weeks or even months and put intense pressure on naval logistics chains and maintenance organizations at a time when they are already hard pressed to keep up with current demands. Even more importantly, such an attack orchestrated on a grand scale could leave U.S. forces unable to respond to critical events around the world in sufficient time to fulfill U.S. defense commitments to allies and friends.

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Aug 14, 2018

R&D Special Report: Federally Funded Research Labs

Posted by in category: military

Concept art: Air Force

National Defense magazine asked research laboratories involved in national security programs: “What is your organization’s number one R&D ‘big bet,’ (in other words: a high-risk, high-reward technology investment) that you believe will have the biggest payoff for those in the military or national security realm? Why? And in what ways do you think it will benefit the end users?”

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Aug 10, 2018

President Donald J. Trump is Building the United States Space Force for a 21st Century Military

Posted by in categories: military, space

America is reclaiming its heritage as the world’s greatest space-faring nation and leading space development into the 21st century.


BUILDING SPACE FORCE: President Donald J. Trump and his Administration are laying the groundwork to build Space Force as the sixth branch of the United States military.

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Aug 10, 2018

Pence details Space Force

Posted by in categories: military, space

SPACE FORCE: Vice President Pence delivers remarks on the Trump administration’s plan to establish a new branch of the U.S. military.

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Aug 9, 2018

A military helicopter drone that can fight wildfires

Posted by in categories: drones, military, robotics/AI

What if an ultra-advanced flying robot designed for extreme military missions could join the fight to combat wildfire alongside human fire crews?

The biggest wildfire in Californian history is raging, with fire officials stating earlier this week that an area almost the size of Los Angeles has been compromised.

It is actually expected to burn through the rest of August, and experts predict the escalation in frequency and scale of wildfires will only continue going forward.

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Aug 9, 2018

US Army moves ahead with development of 100-kW mobile battlefield laser

Posted by in categories: energy, military

The US Army is moving forward with a new 100-kW laser weapon, awarding US$10 million to Lockheed Martin and Dynetics to continue development of the High Energy Laser Tactical Vehicle Demonstrator (HEL TVD). Designed to counter low cost, high volume threats, the new mobile battlefield laser is the latest in the American effort to produce incrementally more powerful and accurate directed energy weapons.

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Aug 6, 2018

Mystery meteor reportedly exploded with 2.1 kilotons of force above a US military base — and the Air Force said nothing

Posted by in categories: existential risks, military

Meteors could be a possible trigger of the nuclear war.


Data from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory shows a record of an object of unspecified size traveling at 24.4 kilometers per second (about 54,000 mph, or Mach 74) at 76.9 degrees north latitude, 69.0 degrees west longitude, on July 25 at 11:55 p.m. That latitude and longitude checks out as almost directly over Thule, Greenland.

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Aug 5, 2018

Employees at Google, Amazon and Microsoft Have Threatened to Walk Off the Job Over the Use of AI

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, ethics, information science, military, robotics/AI

There is. Our engagement with AI will transform us. Technology always does, even while we are busy using it to reinvent our world. The introduction of the machine gun by Richard Gatling during America’s Civil War, and its massive role in World War I, obliterated our ideas of military gallantry and chivalry and emblazoned in our minds Wilfred Owen’s imagery of young men who “die as Cattle.” The computer revolution beginning after World War II ushered in a way of understanding and talking about the mind in terms of hardware, wiring and rewiring that still dominates neurology. How will AI change us? How has it changed us already? For example, what does reliance on navigational aids like Waze do to our sense of adventure? What happens to our ability to make everyday practical judgments when so many of these judgments—in areas as diverse as credit worthiness, human resources, sentencing, police force allocation—are outsourced to algorithms? If our ability to make good moral judgments depends on actually making them—on developing, through practice and habit, what Aristotle called “practical wisdom”—what happens when we lose the habit? What becomes of our capacity for patience when more and more of our trivial interests and requests are predicted and immediately met by artificially intelligent assistants like Siri and Alexa? Does a child who interacts imperiously with these assistants take that habit of imperious interaction to other aspects of her life? It’s hard to know how exactly AI will alter us. Our concerns about the fairness and safety of the technology are more concrete and easier to grasp. But the abstract, philosophical question of how AI will impact what it means to be human is more fundamental and cannot be overlooked. The engineers are right to worry. But the stakes are higher than they think.

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Aug 5, 2018

Aparente explosión en acto de Maduro genera confusión

Posted by in category: military

Military of Venezuela running out of fear after an explosion!

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Aug 4, 2018

Lighter, leaner, lifesaving: AF tests wearable medical tech

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, military, wearables

Wearable medical technology is designed to be small and lightweight to minimize additional burden on medical Airmen and the warfighter, whether they are on a remote battlefield or aboard an aircraft.

“Wearables provide greater accessibility,” said Dr. David Burch, a research biomedical engineer and the medical technology solutions team lead for the En Route Care Medical Technology Solutions Research Group, 711th HPW. “An aircraft has a very tight space and weight limit to maintain performance, and battlefield medics need to carry everything they use. Wearables provide accessibility to the human in a way that is better form, fit, and function.”

One wearable device that achieves that accessibility is a tissue oxygenation sensor, developed jointly with a private company. This small, soft, injectable sensor lets medics determine if a patient is able to be medically evacuated by assessing how well their blood transports oxygen to tissue.

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